Over a year after Miya Ponsetto, 23, was recorded falsely accusing a 14-year-old black teenager of stealing her phone in a luxury hotel where he was staying, she pled guilty to hate crime charges related to the incident on Monday.
The video, which was recorded by the boy’s father, jazz trumpet player Keyon Harrold, shows Ponsetto yelling at the teen who frequently tries to tell her the phone he’s holding isn’t hers. Security footage also displayed Ponsetto chasing and grabbing the teen as others try to intervene, even knocking him to the ground. “If I wasn’t there, who knows what would’ve happened?” Harrold told ABC News.
Ponsetto was on a trip to New York from her hometown of Piru, California, and left before she could be arrested after the incident unfolded on December 26, 2020. When she was later stopped by California police and informed she was under a fugitive warrant in New York, Ponsetto allegedly fleed the deputies in her car and was arrested on January 7, 2021. She agreed to be extradited to New York the next day.
Before and after this viral incident, Ponsetto has been arrested for several incidents including public intoxication, DUI, and tackling a responding officer after getting in a fight with her mother. Ponsetto’s former attorney Sharen Ghatan, who appeared with her in an uncomfortable CBS This Morning interview, said, “It is clear she is emotionally unwell,” when later asked about Ponsetto’s state.
Ponsetto currently faces up to four years in prison for her charges, but if she abides by her probation from a separate charge in California, she can submit to have the sentence reduced to a misdemeanor.
